Freakologic: The Flawed Logic of Freakonomics?

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner bring up interesting points in the book Freakonomics; however, some of these points are either not clearly explained, or just illogical. Freakonomics follows a certain logical progression to prove points. In addition, while most of these points are good ones, some are just are not logical.

First, while explaining how dangerous it is to be a drug dealer, the author states that in a four-year period, the typical drug dealer in this specific group has a 1 in 4 chance of dying. He then compares it to a variety of other professions, and compares that number to the number of death row inmates executed in 2003. He states hat because only 24 of 500 inmates were executed in Texas that year, that there is approximately a five percent chance that someone on death row will die. There are two problems with this statistic; first, he is comparing the statistic for one year of a specific person at death row to four years as a drug dealer. If I were to take the approximately 500 people on death row, and add up the number of executions for four years, it is about 100, which is 20%, pretty close to the drug dealers 25%. Second, at death row in Texas, the wait time before execution is on average 10.26 years. This means that someone on death row is much more likely in the long run to be executed, than a drug dealer is to be killed.

Freakonomics also brings up an interesting question, by asking, "Which is more dangerous, a gun or a pool?" Levitt states that there is one child drowning for every 11,000 pools. He also states that there is one child gun death for every million guns. He really proves nothing with this statistic, but he gives no more supporting arguments besides this one. First, many people own more than one gun, but hardly anyone owns more than one pool. This means that if someone owns five guns, and keeps them all in a cabinet, the kid in the house probably has a less chance to die per gun in the house, but because there is at least one gun, his chances to die are the same as a household with one gun. Second, he does not state how many houses with pools have children in them, and how many households with guns have children. This statistic is also key, because it is certainly probable that households with pools have more kids than households with guns. Finally, he states that people are very worried about gun control for little reason, and they should be worried about pool safety instead. However, one of the reasons that there may be fewer gun deaths than pool deaths is because of peoples concern for gun safety. If guns were not locked, or put on safety, there would probably be a much higher number of gun related accidents.

Lastly, the book has a chapter on baby naming. Most of the chapter is logical, except for one part. Levitt made a list of the top twenty boy names that best signify high education parents. These names, not surprisingly, are mainly Irish or Hebrew names. It is not because these people are educated that they choose these names, like Dor, and Akiva. It is because they are either Jewish or Irish-American that they choose these names. According to the Jewish Population Survey, more than fifty percent of Jewish Americans have a bachelor degree, compared to only about twenty-five percent of non-Jewish Americans. Irish-Americans too, have become more educated in American than the average person has. Because these two groups of people are more educated on average, than the rest of society, when doing studies regarding names, and parents' education levels, these ethnic groups come up. However, these names will not necessarily spread to the rest of the public like the authors state. These names, because they are part of ethnic groups, may stay in those ethnic groups.

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner prove many things in Freakonomics, but not everything they state is proof. In conclusion, Freakologic has some serious logical issues, which detract from the rest of the book.